legs and rubbed him down and he looked better.
“You about finished down there, son?” Pappy called.
“Sure,” I said. “I was just sprucing Red up a little.”
“You better get your clothes on,” Pappy said with a mildness that still deceived me sometimes. “It looks like we're going to have company, after all.”
I stiffened in the cold water. Then I splashed over to the edge and went over to the bush where my clothes were. They weren't dry, but they weren't as wet as they had been the night of the rain—the night I had killed Buck Creyton. I put them on the way they were, stuffed my feet in my boots, and buckled on the .44's.
As I went clawing my way up the bank, Pappy said, “Keep down, son. We don't want to tell them anything they don't already know.”
I raised my head carefully over the edge of the bank, the way Pappy was doing. Sure enough, it was Hagan and four other men that I'd never seen before. All of them were heeled up with guns. Hagan was the only one not carrying a rifle in his saddle boot.
“Who are they?” I said.
“Jim Langly's men.”
I shot Pappy a glance. Langly was the marshal of Abilene.
I said, “I thought the marshal was a friend of yours.”
Pappy smiled that smile of his, but this time it seemed sadder than usual. “That was a mistake I made,” he said quietly. “You never know who your friends are until you get a price on your head.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don't know,” Pappy said slowly. “I haven't decided yet.”
We lay there for a long moment watching Hagan call one of the herders over. The man pointed toward the creek, evidently in answer to a question. The man went away, and Hagan called the four Langly men together and talked for a minute. Then the men fanned out, taking up positions inside the covered supply wagons.
“Well, that's about as clear as a man could want it,” Pappy said.
I felt myself tightening up. The rattle of the cotton-wood seemed louder than it had a few minutes before. Smells were sharper. Even my eyes were keener.
“That bastard,” I said. “That lousy bastard.”
“Hagan?”
“Who else?”
Pappy seemed to think it over carefully. “I guess we really can't blame Hagan much,” he said. “Fifteen thousand is a lot of money for a few minutes' work-especially if you don't have any idea how dangerous work like that can be.” He paused for a minute. “But Jim Langly... We've been good friends for years. This is a hell of a thing for Jim to do.”
He still didn't sound mad, but more hurt than anything.
“What are you going to do?” I asked again.
After a long wait, Pappy said, “I think maybe we'll ride up the creek a way, and then make for Abilene and talk to Jim.”
“You're not going to let Hagan get away with this, are you?” I was suddenly hot inside. I had forgotten that last night I had promised myself no more trouble.
“We can't buck four saddle guns,” Pappy said.
I knew he was right, but my hands ached to get at Hagan's throat. I wanted to see that pink face of his turn red, and then blue, and then purple. But I choked the feeling down and the effort left me empty. It always has to be somebody, I thought. Now it's Hagan, and Langly. Why can't they just let us alone?
Slowly, Pappy began sliding down the bank. His eyes looked tired and very old.
We went upstream as quietly as we could, scattering drinking cattle and horses, and once in a while coming upon a naked man lathering himself with soap. We rode for maybe a mile in the creek bed, until we were pretty sure that nobody in the Hagan camp could see us; then we pulled out in open country and headed north.
Pappy rode stiffly in the saddle, not looking one way or the other. After a while the hurt look went out of his eyes, and a kind of smoky anger banked up like sullen thunderheads.
We left North Cottonwood behind; and I wondered vaguely how long it would be before Hagan and his law- dogs would get tired of waiting in those covered wagons and send somebody down to the creek to see what had happened to us. Maybe they already had.
I tried to keep my mind blank. I tried to push Hagan and Langly out of my brain, but they hung on and ate away at me like a rotting disease. As we rode, the morning got to be afternoon and a dazzling Kansas sun moved over to the west and beat at us like a blowtorch. Gradually the monotony of silent march lulled me into a stupor, and I found myself counting every thud as Red put a hoof down, and cussing Bass Hagan with every breath.
Actually, it wasn't Hagan in particular that I was cursing, but mankind in general. The thousands of greedy, money-loving bastards like Hagan who were never satisfied to take care of their own business and let it go at that. They were like a flock of vultures feeding on other people's misery. They were like miserable coyotes sniffing around a sick cow, waiting until the animal was too weak to fight back and then pouncing and killing. I had enough hate for all the Hagans. The thousands of them. All the bastards who wouldn't let us alone, who insisted on getting themselves killed. And every time they insisted, it put a bigger price on our heads.
I remember looking over at Pappy once and wondering if he had ever thought of it that way. Pappy, who had never stolen a dime in his life, who had never wanted to hurt anybody except when it was a matter of life or death for himself—I wondered if he felt trapped the way I did, if he could feel the net drawing a little tighter every time
